And this insight is not from a transcendent vantage point? — frank

A most revealing question: How is it that within logic, we can acknowledge logic's limitation in a way that is non trivial, non abstract? We see delimitations all the time, but these are contingent, that is, set up by equational details, but to question logic itself is not to deny logic, which is impossible, a performative contradiction, but to set oneself apart (Dosteovsky: Am I a piano key?) from it, for logic does not come to us as an empty form, but full of the language and culture that makes a claim on belief, sets the terms of engagement in the world. It is not the logic, but the world and its institution (Kierkegaard's sense of original sin) that occlude something "Other". And we stand on this primordial and very unfamiliar threshold. My claim is that this is where philosophy is trying to take us.

The passage in John 1:1 is mysticism with roots in platonism and stoicism. I think the assumption running through it was that the world's logic is our logic. We perceive the world's logic through a kind of sympathy that could be described as having access to the divine mind through logic. Or you could say our minds are the Divine mind, just muddied.

Two side effects were:

1. The One, which is a higher, unexpressable truth, and

2. Matter, the mind's dead end.

These are like poles between which the mind swings like a pendulum. And this is the trinity, btw: the Christian translation is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The original was One, Logos, and Anima. — frank

And to make that dramatic step toward the one: how is this done? Isn't the logos, in this extraordinary affair, simply a term that would possess what it is that lies so impossibly before the inquirer? Philosophy is, one might say, the true final frontier, and the obstacles it presents are about its own structure and history. The utterance itself turns on, militates against, the endeavor! For the finality lies not in a more and more elaborate construction of a grand thesis, as if Hegelian Geist were unfolding in the dialectical path of conceiving it, but in the impossible simplicity that is originally there. Impossible because, recalling Kierkegaard, actuality is NOT rational. Divinity discovery is not rational achievement.

It would be great if you could also give a sign that you have read my reply to your post ( https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/588043) two days ago ...

You're referencing sort of a raw data feed that enters your brain, unprocessed at all by reason. It's a hyper-empiricism, devoid of rational organization within the mind. Was this not part of Kant's project in responding to Hume? That is, we can't see the causation when one billiard ball hits the other, so our mind imposes it, which is no different than all the other things our mind imposes on the world in order to understand it, whether that be space, time, or other sorts of things?

The immediate sense impression you reference doesn't make sense to me because it would necessarily be mediated in some way. That mediation isn't limited to sense organs, but by reason itself, which is in fact impacted by language.

So explain to me the elephant just as it is, unmediated by sensory organs or reason. How could that ever be done - the pure unadulterated elephant? — Hanover

Take Kant's position, and there you are , this noumenal entity whose very thought structure prohibits access to the noumenal eternity that is the metaphysical setting for, well, where we really are, and what we really are; but you absolutely cannot speak of this, understand this, because it is beyond the categories of thought, as well as space and time. By this account, you night as well just sit back, try to be a good person via the categorical imperative, and drop all pretentions of making sense out of this metaphysics.
My claim (borrowed, put together) is that this conception can only lead to one conclusion: that cat on the sofa is really not a cat on a sofa at all, but I cannot see this because I understand the world only through my cognitive and sensory limitations ( and , I should add, you get the same conclusion with the materialist's assumption that all we actually perceive is the inside of a brain). But consider: the very noumena that is supposed to be utterly hands off to the understanding cannot be exclusive in any way: it is the transcendental whole, all inclusive, and this include the this obsevable world. Finitude and infinity are not mutually exclusive; rather the latter must subsume the former, and this means my perception of the cat being on the sofa is no less noumenal than that which is supposed to be beyond the threshold of Kantian epistemology.
The elephant in t he room is this "presence" that is noumenal that is right there IN the empirical event unfolding before my eyes and mind. Looking for eternity, divinity, the absolute is therefore a matter of destruction of the conceptual dynamics that keep this extraordinary apprehension at bay.
Real meditation is destructive.

The elephant in t he room is this "presence" that is noumenal that is right there IN the empirical event unfolding before my eyes and mind. — Constance

The elephant as you've described it here is the phenomena, not the noumena. If not, how do you distinguish the phenomenal and noumenal?

So why aren't clouds intelligent? Don't your observations show that they are? They don't dilly dally running in circles when they come to a low pressure zone. They go straight to raining as your goats go to the barn — frank

How do I conclude you are intelligent and not a cloud responding to pressure zones?

And to make that dramatic step toward the one: how is this done? Isn't the logos, in this extraordinary affair, simply a term that would possess what it is that lies so impossibly before the inquirer? Philosophy is, one might say, the true final frontier, and the obstacles it presents are about its own structure and history. The utterance itself turns on, militates against, the endeavor! For the finality lies not in a more and more elaborate construction of a grand thesis, as if Hegelian Geist were unfolding in the dialectical path of conceiving it, but in the impossible simplicity that is originally there. Impossible because, recalling Kierkegaard, actuality is NOT rational. Divinity discovery is not rational achievement. — Constance

Yep. 'In the depths of our hearts the light of God is shining on a soundless sea with no shore.'. --. Rumi

How do I conclude you are intelligent and not a cloud responding to pressure zones? — Hanover

I think you're making assumptions. It's not from observation, that was my point.

Conclusion: Unfortunately, the statement "In the beginning was the Word", wherever it comes from, has no value for me as interpreted by the Bible and the majority of the Jewish and Christian people. — Alkis Piskas

I tend to agree with a lot of what you say, the gist being that talk about "the word" really should be taken as a way to describe God's creation of the world, or, the foundations of existence, and so on. This is an absurd presumption of language and a testament to the boundless need we have to bring things under our control. It is on this point I would begin a response. While this anthropomorphic tendency certain does lead to absurd thinking, it is important to observe that the anthropomorphic presence is also presence of what is not anthropomorphic at all, for to see that this cup on the table is a "worded" situation, that is, I think about the cup, the table, "being on" something, and so on, even if I don't explicitly say this on recognition. And when I look up and behold all things, there is the stamp of logic and language all over it; it is what makes the world familiar to the understanding for us (not so much animals, and this is an interesting point for another time).

Any presence that comes before a person is a thoughtful presence, otherwise it is not a presence at all, as in an infants mind blooming and buzzing, there is no presence of anything until singularities are carved out of the world via language (the notion of mere familiarity and language being joined at the hip is an interesting one). So, when it comes to something being at all, we are deep in language, the word. The foundational analysis of existence must be about the language that separates, individualizes and carves out meaning out of "difference".

When the issue of God and creation and the beginning of all things, one way to think of this is to respect that language brings "the world" into being qui9te literally. Now, what is beyond language is another matter, but it needs to be approached not as a distant metaphysical impossibility, but a very close, intimate one: after all, the language in question is all over the place, there, when I awaken in the morning in eerything.

My thinking is that we need to allow the term beginning loses its value here altogether, just as you say, but this must be done in the intimacy of the actual encounter with the world, not with an understanding historical metaphysics of the Bible and Jewish metaphysics (though this latter brings to mind things I know little of, but have gathered some through Levinas and Buber and other who live in two worlds, really, philosophy and religion. If you have something interesting to read on this, let me know).

I think you're making assumptions. It's not from observation, that was my point. — frank

Sure, and my point was that unless you're going to fall into some sort of solipsism, you have to make assumptions based upon the observations you make. My goats engage in intentional behavior that clouds and rocks do not. The rock does not stubbornly sit before me refusing to respond to change in a literal sense.

But, if there is some philosophical theory that will unravel for you if it requires you hold that goats cannot engage in intentional conduct, and I have to use the cloud analogy to substantiate that goats don't engage in intentional conduct, then I feel fairly satisfied in rejecting whatever that theory is.

A speculative thinker who is almost unreadable and readily misinterpreted is unlikely to help. How about one of the numerous physicists writing on the subject? — Tom Storm

But these comments are altogether vague. My experience tells me you haven't read Heidegger at all. Physics presupposes exactly what needs to be examined, therefore, they say little or nothing of philosophical interest.

Thank you for your reply to my comment to your to[pic, @Constance!

I liked the presentation of your posistion. Very good. :up:

Sure, and my point was that unless you're going to fall into some sort of solipsism, you have to make assumptions based upon the observations you make. My goats engage in intentional behavior that clouds and rocks do not. Th — Hanover

But when you go to observe clouds and rocks, don't you think you might be influenced by your worldview? If you saw an indication of intelligence in rocks, wouldn't you speed to explain that away?

Our ancestors from around 5000 years ago didn't do that. You'd be considered crazy and possibly evil if you doubted that the world around you is alive with peeping, knowing, invisible eyes. Your observations would back that up.

The rock does not stubbornly sit before me refusing to respond to change in a literal sense. — Hanover

Sure looks like it.

But, if there is some philosophical theory that will unravel for you if it requires you hold that goats cannot engage in intentional conduct, and I have to use the cloud analogy to substantiate that goats don't engage in intentional conduct, then I feel fairly satisfied in rejecting whatever that theory is. — Hanover

I don't have any theory that must hold sway. I was asking sincerely how one would remember things without language. I'm not sure how that would happen. Like muscle memory? Like the memory of an aroma where you literally smell it again by the magic if cranial nerves?

You had better tell that to the professor...
— Pop

They are doing science; you are not. — Banno

Where have I stated that I am doing science? I do theory.

That everything is information is already implied in Systems Theory and Enactivism, but I hone in on it in ways that they haven't. Specifically I define it, and through this definition have found that nothing can exist outside of information - outside of the interaction of two or more forms.

Normally we would say we can write data to a hard drive, and move the hard drive form one room to another, and hence we think we have moved information. This is not true. This is the same problem as Schrodinger's cat. No matter how certain we are about what's in the box, we can not know for sure until we open it. The same is true for the hard drive, we can not know if there is any data on it until we read it. This, and many other similar illustrations validate my definition, such that it is predictive and can be used scientifically to probe situations logically - situations that we cannot directly observe. Of course I state this as a belief.

The word God means moral perfection and innocence. Such a state seems impossible for humans and for a necessary being, although not for a lower "god". There cannot be a being of Pure Act because virtues are divided up between ones a being can have by nature and ones that require the eye of the tiger to obtain. There might be a being of infinite innocence but it couldn't have the maximum of courage if it was always in a blissful changeless state "rolling around heaven all day". Again, there is innocence and acquired goods, childhood-natural goods and goods that must be performed. So are there wizards and a pantheon? Are these who "aliens" really are? It's not bad to think so. I listen to a lot of traditional religious music and connect with the mystical ethos of it. But all this talk of the world coming from a language, whether it be of Genesis or an Om, goes back to the paternal Pure Act being of traditional religion who in reality can't represent all reality because some goods in reality must be experienced in order to partake of. — Gregory

i will put aside much of this. Sorry, because people who think like this are often very good people; I just take issue with what I call bad metaphysics. I would put attention to the interesting parts. For example, moral perfection and innocence? Infinite innocence? Here is a problem: infinite innocence, or, pure innocence. This idea suggests one can do no wrong because one IS a perfectly good will. Being a perfectly good will does not guarantee perfect actions since perfect actions are actions in the world, and all that is in the world is contingent, and knowledge of the world is requisite for action. To know the world is to know all about ethical entanglements, their complexities and the institutions of culture and language that make them so, and this is the very essence of what is NOT pure innocence. A purely innocent person is like a child, full of joy and spontaneity, but really not challenged in the ways of intersubjective thinking.
Then this talk a "paternal Pure Act". I frankly don't like the paternal part, but I do like the idea that "some goods in reality must be experienced". But what IS this Good that needs to be experienced? You can say it is a good of divinity, but then, what is there in the world that suggests divinity? It really does come down to this: We make claims, assertions, but the validity of these depends on the world having something that "says" this. The world must speak first! to warrant any claim at all. What is there, I ask, in the world, that gives warrant to this "Goodness"?

Specifically I define it, and through this definition have found that nothing can exist outside of information - outside of the interaction of two or more forms. — Pop

Does that conclusion amount to a rejection of a claim that something else can be recognized outside of the stories we make to explain things?

My claim... is that this conception can only lead to one conclusion: that cat on the sofa is really not a cat on a sofa at all, but I cannot see this because I understand the world only through my cognitive and sensory limitations ( — Constance

Ah, there it is again: Stove's Gem.

I taste oysters only with my tongue, and hence I never taste oysters as they really are.

As if this meant one never tastes oysters.

SO there's the problem with the OP. If you adhere to Stove's Gem, if you never taste oysters, of course you can't recognise the beginning.

The alternative is to recognise that you do taste the oysters. The noumenal is a misleading nonsense.

I believe the world has bad and good elements. Just like God, or the universe, or whatever, it's just the essence of reality

Does that conclusion amount to a rejection of a claim that something else can be recognized outside of the stories we make to explain things? — Valentinus

Yes, nothing can exist outside of the interaction of ideas, but the interaction of ideas has a physical basis in neurobiology, and given a systems understanding, a similar such situation must have evolved outside of mind initially. So the evolution of informational structure in mind is equal to the evolution of informational structure outside of mind. So there is only one way for informational structure to evolve, and everything that evolves is informational structure. So panpsychism is the obvious conclusion.

It will take a while for this to get over the line, :lol: and I think the showdown will be in cellular biology, where greater resolution of what is going on due to technology, is pushing opinion towards a recognition that what we are seeing is mind like. As suggested in the paper cited earlier. It concludes with the comment : "The concept of a gene, beyond a means of specifying the amino acid sequences of the peptides from which the proteins are formed, is both mostly unnecessary and possibly misleading."

I think this is as much as any academic who values his tenure can say at the present moment, but more and more are starting to say it, it seems.

So, is that to say, that you consider the challenge made by Constance to be irrelevant to your enterprise?

Does that conclusion amount to a rejection of a claim that something else can be recognized outside of the stories we make to explain things? — Valentinus

That's a good response; Pop's path has the hallmarks of idealism.

So, is that to say, that you consider the challenge made by Constance to be irrelevant to your enterprise? — Valentinus

Can you point me to the challenge please?

I was referring to this:

The real question is, does the world "speak"? I mean, religion is a philosophical matter, and the reason this idea sounds counterintuitive is that philosophy, in the minds of many or most, has no place in the dark places where language cannot go, but this is a Kantian/Wittgensteinian (Heidegger, too, of course; though he takes steps....) legacy that rules out impossible thinking, and it is here where philosophy has gone so very wrong: Philosophy is an empty vessel unless it takes on the the original encounter with the world, which is prior to language, and yet, IN language, for language is in the world. Philosophy's end, point, that is, is threshold enlightenment, not some foolish anal retentive need for positivism's clarity. — Constance

If she is saying that the value of any philosophy is the end point reality it creates, I would agree. :100: But if we differ dramatically in these conceptions, then we set ourselves up for conflict. So finding something we can all agree on is crucial.

The relationship of one part to another, is where logical structure begins. This is the beginning of knowledge. Knowledge is related and integrated, and is progressively built upon, such that any subsequent structure ( added understanding ) has to fit existing logical structure, as per constructivism. So, things understood tomorrow have to be understood in terms of today's understanding. So, it is a building onto current understanding. — Pop

I don't take issue with this at all. In fact, it is the kind of thing Derrida makes a big deal out of: after all, if (following Saussure) relationships is the kind of thing knowledge IS, then this makes knowledge indeterminate, for the relationship is not direct, but diffuse among that which is not posited but is in relation to what is posited, and the relation itself becomes a part of positing. Nothing singular can stand out, ever. Logical structure refers not to the form of knowledge but the content, and affirmations, say, scientific ones, hold their place only because they await sufficient cause, that is, dialectic opposition, to change. This is Kuhn, or close to what he says in Structures of Scientific Revolutions.
Rorty loved Kuhn, and Rorty helped me confirm some basic ideas. His trouble was that when he got to that threshold where he knew knowledge did not cling to the object, had no ontological claim to the "what" of the thing, he did what all goo d intellectuals do: he dismissed all non intellectual alternatives. Never occurred to him (that I have read) that deconstruction really meant destruction to achieve insight. Can't imagine his type "sitting quietly, doing nothing", but then, this is what I privilege over all esle, for it opens the door to, well, sheer openness, which is where philosophy is directing us.

Occam's Razor is god? — Banno

Not so much the efficiency of reasoning as the simplicity of encounter. One is not simply cutting out what is not required to explain X; one is rather asking more originary questions. You might say it is Occam's Razor at the level of basic questions, such that the superfluous premise becomes the presumption of speaking/writing at all. Occam's Razor is about an explicit act in theorizing, but it can never, ever be rid of the foundation of thought that makes thought itself possible. The best one can do here is allow philosophy to do its work, which is the destruction of assumptions that are implicitly at work defining the world at the basic level.

Wittgenstein proceeded beyond this; as if the Tractatus were his final word. He subsequently showed the limitations of his view in the Tractatus, showing "the nature of logic" in terms of following and going against rules.

And he had much to say about the identification of simples. What is to count as a simple depends on what one is doing. There's a deep tendency for folk to choose this or that to be the ultimate simple - Logos, information, dialectic (@Pop); but any such choice will be relative to this or that activity - that language game.

So answering the question "what was at the beginning..." - the beginning of what? That'll tell us what game we are playing. — Banno

But Witt never thought that language had a place in giving expression to those spooky, mystical, threshold experiences one encounters that yield meaning without perfect clarity. By his standard, he was simply avoiding vacuous thinking. By mine, he set a standard that explicitly denied talk about the most interesting things about being human. Take a problematic term like "ultimate reality". You find this in the Pali Canon in the Abhiidhamma. Wittgenstein said that such terms make no sense, that they are logically impossible terms because even a word like reality, this absolute that is all inclusive, has no possibility of an alternative, an opposite, and terms make no sense if their opposite cannot be conceived (one cannot conceive of an up with out a down, e.g.). But then, there is this awkward intuition that does not listen to logical objections like this, nor does it refute them. Rather, it is IN the indeterminacy that language must deal, elucidate, elaborate, and so on.
Hence, my thoughts on Witt. regarding tis matter. The "game" is certainly afoot, but the point I am making is this: language games are open is the sense that interplay is indeterminate, endlessly reinventing (the world, Rorty and his pragmatist predecessors say, is made, not discovered); but I am claiming there is something that is NOT a game at all in the middle of all this, which is intimated when the game is intentionally, if partially, terminated, yet inquiry moves forward.

Heidegger thought the Buddhists were on to something. I think he was right.

How do you remember what you can't put into words? — frank

Interesting question. First, an animal can remember without words. Second, I think for us, the words are there and provide a backdrop of remembering, as with all those familiar affairs, but if something novel occurs, it finds its place first within this backdrop, but if it it is truly novel, a new paradigm is needed. If God started appearing here and there as an intuitive and undeniable presence, we would not leave language to make this affirmation; rather we would assimilate the experience, but IN this assimilation, God would remain God, like a new color (as unimaginable as this is) would remain what it is, but would be understood contextualized in the usual way.

But Witt never thought that language had a place in giving expression to those spooky, mystical, threshold experiences one encounters that yield meaning without perfect clarity. — Constance

Well, that's not what I would have supposed, although care is needed here. Russell commented that "Mr Wittgenstein manages to say a good deal about what cannot be said". Much of the Investigations, and also of On Certainty, touches on this topic, which his biographers agree was for him or the highest importance. Wittgenstein's enterprise is targeted at the enterprise of scientism; for him what is of the greatest import is what is unsaid.

Never occurred to him (that I have read) that deconstruction really meant destruction to achieve insight. Can't imagine his type "sitting quietly, doing nothing", but then, this is what I privilege over all esle, for it opens the door to, well, sheer openness, which is where philosophy is directing us. — Constance

We can either deconstruct to achieve insight, or construct a big picture consistent with science and physics which I prefer to do. And when I do I find it is all about the evolution of forms. These forms are all self organizing, and they are made of endlessly variable informational structure. So really, everything can be reduced to the self organization of information. We know what information is - the evolutionary interaction of form, but we don't know what self organization is. We know self organization is what creates order in the universe, from which structure and life evolves.

When I consider this issue, I find that if I say self organization is caused by God, or physics, or the anthropic principle, etc. I do not change what it is, but I change myself. I limit my ability to experience reality. It becomes something like Wit's word game, or as I prefer to call it information game. Ultimately this becomes a process of information, where what occurs is an interaction of forms. :smile: So we cannot escape the fact that everything is information, because everything is information from every perspective.

So it makes sense to me not to define the source of self organization, rather to call it consciousness, and this way there is consciousness and information in its many forms. This way I do not limit my ability to experience reality, and in this knowledge I also learn to respect the various forms of reality of others.

But to talk about possibility of impossibility points first to the "'words or logic" that constructs concepts like possibility and impossibility. Perfect relation? What is this if not a language construction? Absolute interconnectedness in the logos? What is this if not a logical interconnectedness? That is, the "saying" is always analytically first. — Constance

Analytical is kind of the opposite to my approach. But I think I get where you’re coming from. And I didn’t mean absolute interconnectedness IN the logos, rather logos AS the ultimate idea of interconnectedness.

Possibility/impossibility points to the quality or diversity of the idea(l) - what do you think logic constructs its concepts out of? Itself? And construction requires a source of energy. Perfect relation is paradox, because nothing else is necessary. And if this paradox exists, then any and all of them do.

And this tapping into eternity, how does this cash out in analysis? Terms like finitude and infinity are fascinating to me, but it is not as if they are exhausted in the mere utterance, the incidental usage. for the question posed here goes to the structure of time itself. Time, I claim (and I am no more than what I read) is the structure of finitude, and finitude is subsumed by eternity, both, obviously, difficult terms and deserve discussion, but the final discussion to be had on this and any matter looks at the th phenomenological analysis of time. What is time? This is presupposed by talk about beginnings. — Constance

Interesting that you read ‘an infinite source of energy’ as ‘eternity’. The finitude/infinity of energy is the paradoxical quality of time, and the qualitative flow of energy is time’s directional logic. Have you read Rovelli’s ‘The Order of Time’?

Incidentally, I think talk about anything is just a way to test our reasoning, which I would argue is more than the sum of what we read.

Don't know what you mean by infinite perfection. Not that I have no ideas about such a thing, but what you mean is not clear. At any rate, This intersection: is there just this (leaning Heideggarian) construction? Or is there not something, if you will, behind this in the reductive act of suspending all these possibilities? Once you step into that rarified world where language's grasp on the givenness of things is loosened, and meaning is free from interpretative restraint, is there not some undeniable qualitative change in the perceptual event as such? — Constance

Yes, there is not just this possible prediction, but also its negation - the impossibility of it all. You’re presuming a ‘perceptual event’ has form: a definable quality to be changed. But any perceptual event is qualitatively variable in itself - it manifests variable observation events according to a predictive relation, but it’s also variably perceivable as such. So it isn’t so much change as a vague awareness of variability - on the periphery of any capacity for perception. That either draws attention and effort (affect), or not. It’s not undeniable - it comes down to an availability of energy.

What you say about identity is quite right, I think, and this then makes a turn toward agency, for identity is general, definitional, as in the identity of a term, a concept, but agency is all about the actuality of what it is (who it is). Most clearly an issue for ethics. — Constance

My point here is that at this intersection we must embody energy, logic, quality, or some combination, in order to relate to anything at all. You agree that any quest for an unlimited source of energy is one of identity: it assumes that everything has a proper, definitive relation to everything else, and if we somehow manage to complete this process of identification, then the source must reveal itself. It’s an issue for ethics because to do this we assume that our perspective embodies a proper, definitive relation to everything else.

Conversely, any quest for a proper, definitive relational structure to the world (such as ethics) assumes an unlimited source of energy. The idea that there is an ought is predicated on the assumption that we embody unlimited agency. The reality of human experience is that our own limited attention and effort is selectively focused, and it is only in a proper relation to everything (and everyone) else that we can even approach unlimited access to energy.

I am claiming there is something that is NOT a game at all in the middle of all this, which is intimated when the game is intentionally, if partially, terminated, yet inquiry moves forward. — Constance

Some games invoke the modification of their own rules. That's not necessarily a termination.

Sun up?

I read something about logic being preformatively unquestionable and you lost me.